On its face, Chicago\u2019s municipal pension system is an integral part of the Chicago city government. The system is included in the city\u2019s budget, it is directly funded by the city, and its various boards of trustees include city officials and mayoral appointees. Yet, when it comes to enforcing the city\u2019s anti-corruption laws in advance of the Chicago\u2019s closely watched 2015 municipal election, Mayor Rahm Emanuel\u2019s administration is suddenly arguing that the pension funds are not part of the city government at all.<\/span>
<\/span>The counterintuitive declaration came last month from the mayor-appointed ethics commission, responding to Chicago aldermen\u2019s request for an investigation of campaign contributions to Emanuel from the financial industry. The request followed disclosures that executives at firms managing Chicago pension money have made more than $600,000 worth of donations to Emanuel. The contributions flowed to the mayor despite a city ordinance \u2014 and an executive order by Emanuel himself \u2014 restricting mayoral campaign contributions from city contractors.<\/span>
<\/span>Brushing off the lawmakers\u2019 complaint about Emanuel\u2019s donations from the financial industry, the mayor\u2019s ethics commission issued a nonbinding legal opinion arguing that Chicago\u2019s pension systems are \u201cnot agencies or departments of the city, and thus firms that contract with them are not doing or seeking to do business with the city.\u201d The commission\u2019s interpretation means financial firms\u2019 business with Chicago pension funds should be considered exempt from city ethics laws.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nSeriously?<\/p>\n
You can take pay to play campaign donations for the pension fund because it isn’t really goverment?<\/p>\n
This is pretty damn corrupt.<\/p>\n
Technically, the SEC could rule on this:<\/p>\n
With the mayor attempting to exempt the pension system from the city\u2019s ethics rules, [Alderman Scott]<\/span> Waguespack says the lawmakers are counting on the federal government to enforce a 2011 Securities and Exchange Commission rule aiming to restrict contributions to public officials from executives at financial firms that manage public pension money. To that end, Waguespack and two other lawmakers have filed a formal complaint with the SEC, which responded with a letter saying the agency will review their complaint \u201cin connection with our statutory and regulatory responsibilities.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nYeah, like that is going to happen.<\/p>\n
Emanuel is a FOB (F<\/b><\/u>riend o<\/b><\/u>f B<\/b><\/u>arack), so nothing is going to happen to him, at least until after 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m not particularly surprised. You see hizzoner Rahm Emanuel is declaring that the Chicago pension funds are not a part of city government so that he can ignore pay to play rules: On its face, Chicago\u2019s municipal pension system is an integral part of the Chicago city government. The system is included in the city\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1142,1010,970,1009,1051],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-bureaucracy","category-corruption","category-government","category-hypocrisy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}